CNT 2008 Survey

I just want to remind you all to look at the transportation portion of the survey that I sent out via e-mail to the class distribution list. I have a few questions for you to think about/discuss:

• What are your thoughts about the questions for last year?
• After looking at the Clean Air Cool Planet Carbon Calculator (CACPCC) what information do we need to enter in?
• What information is viable to get?
• What can we do this time around to make it easier?
• Can we get better results?

*Feel free to discuss the balance between many questions (more questions=increased information) and time it takes a survey taker to complete (more time=decreased responses).

Syracuse Survey

The Syracuse Survey serves as a nice, shallow outline for questions that we may want to ask. If you open the document itself, (which is a Word Document,) take a look at number 17; Liv and I believe that is the best question/comment section. Question 17 gets right at the idea of improvement: How can we increase the use of alternative transportation?

I Made It

Hey Everyone.....

I finally figured out how to join this crazy BLOG!

Biofuels on campus

Check out the great work being done by Facilities in slowly moving away from coal on campus! I know this is a topic (and a really difficult challenge) still ahead of us yet, but it's never too soon to send thanks where it's due. To all of us, this represents a reduction in CO2, mercury and sulfuric acid entering the atmosphere on our behalf. It also reduces the amount of mountain-top coal mining in the eastern portion of our nation.

Class Log 2/10/2010

Is it possible for someone to be connected to a place and not feel a responsibility towards it and the surrounding world? We began today's discussion by reading from Kolbert, page 60, and discussing how little people in America today tend to notice the world around them. There are certainly exceptions, such as the Citizen Science Center at Beaver Creek Reserve, but the spread of cities has made it really difficult for people to make connections with specific places, as has been common at other times and places.

From there, we dove into the transportation section of 2008 CNT report.

Suggestions for Questions

Because the University of Pennsylvania didn't have a sample survey available, I came up with some questions based on the medium-impact recommendations (p. 44-46). You can probably infer that the answers would be of the format very likely, somewhat likely, no opinion, somewhat unlikely, very unlikely (or the like, whatever fits in). Here they are:

Portland State University

I thought Portland State University's campus commuter survey was fairly good. I like how they allowed people to choose different ways to commute on different days because often times a student's schedule is different on different days, which could affect how they commute. I think it is interesting that they had survey takers tell how they commuted each day last week. I am wondering if this would give you accurate results or not, since they asked about a specific week and not how people commute in general. I think it is also good to ask what benefits would encourage the survey takers to try alternatives to commuting alone. I also think it is a good idea to have a spot for people to comment on PSU transportation. It was different for them to ask for the survey taker's address. I do not really understand the purpose. Overall, I thought this survey had some very good points for us to consider when doing our survey.

Northeastern Illinois University Commuter Survey

I thought NEIU's commuter survey was decent and provided the university with some information regarding commuter tendencies. It began with a introduction explaining the contents of the survey and what the results were going to be used for. The introduction could have been a little more professionally phrased, but for the most part it served its purpose.

The first page of the survey consisted of demographic questions. I feel that it would be better to put this information at the end of the survey to signal that it was coming to an end and also to keep any "sensitive" questions at the end, so as not to discourage people from completing the survey. (some people may view demographic questions as "sensitive")

Stout's Campus Commuter Survey

Since we didn't quite get to talk about it in class today, I'll post some of Heather and my thoughts on Stout's survey here. If you want to take a look at the survey yourself the title to this is a link to it. The survey is on the last few pages of the document.

One important thing that Stout did was to separate seasonal and non-seasonal commuters. I think we should also find a way to make sure that changes in commuting due to weather are taken into account. Stout may have taken it too far though by also breaking it down to two month periods. While I would love to get that exact, looking at their results brings up some problems. Since this survey will only be answered by a relatively small percentage of students, it is important that we have a large enough random sample to be able to represent the whole campus. I don't remember the exact calculations to find this amount but in some of their questions Stout had less than 50 respondents. We need to make sure we have enough respondents before extrapolating the data to represent the campus as a whole.

Question for Dr. Boulter

Dr. Boulter (or anyone else who may have an answer to share),

Last week, I came up with a question concerning the reading in the Climate Change: Picturing the Science book. In chapter 1 on page 26, the book mentions the shrinking of the stratosphere due to it's decrease in temperature. My first question is what is causing the stratosphere to get cooler? My only guess is that it's on the outside of the "blanket" of emissions that is trapping the heat. Second, is there any risk that comes with having a smaller, denser stratosphere? The book jokingly says, "Chicken Little might not have approved," but that's not reassuring to me.

Thank you.

Willamette University Campus Commuter Survey

Just a few comments about the Willamette Campus Commuter Survey since we didn't get to it in class.

The survey is extremely short (only 7 questions) which provides both advantages and disadvantages. Having a short survey probably increases the number of people that will be willing to take it, but by severely limiting the number of questions, such as the Willamette survey did, I can’t imagine that the results would be very thorough and conclusive.

One particular aspect of the survey that I thought was good was that they asked for distance from school, days commuting per week, and weeks commuting per year, all separately. I think that this makes the survey easier for the person taking it because, at least in my opinion, it is much easier for to estimate these amounts than to estimate the total number of miles driven for the entire year.

As far as improvements go, it would be nice if they had included a section for suggestions regarding the commuter situation on their campus and also if the survey had differentiated between seasons.

Hej från Sverige!

Greetings CNT 2010! I hope you are all as excited as I was when we began the carbon inventory two years ago. It was certainly an eye opening experience for me, and I am excited to see the improvements your fresh points of view will bring to this iteration of the project. While I am disappointed that I won’t have a chance to be doing any hands on with you, I can’t say I am disappointed to be here in Växjö.

Often called the “The Greenest City in Europe” (a title given to it by the BBC and adopted by over 500 other media organizations), Växjö has been making strides for several years to cut its carbon footprint and become more sustainable. I can see the efforts that are being made all over. However, they are often so well integrated they are not terribly obvious. The first thing that really stuck out to me was all the bikes.

I arrived in the city on a cold snowy night and when I got off the train there were people biking on the main street in the city center, right there with all the cars. The weather here is very similar to Wisconsin and as I am typing right now there are still people biking past me through the snowy campus mall. The bicycle parking on campus is abundant and often covered. Even though nearly all of the University’s 15,000 students live on campus, there are very few parking lots for cars. Walking along the lake into the city center people from youth to retirement age, men and women, all bike past. When I discovered the statistic that, as of 2006, 40 percent of households in Växjö didn’t own cars, I wasn’t too surpised.

Reading Kolbert . . . .

Field Notes' fourth chapter, "The Butterfly and the Toad," ends Kolbert's first section, "Nature."  Please feel free to post questions or comments on that chapter.

I've been continuing to think about media coverage of global climate change.  If you click on the title to this post, it will take you to an article "Environmental Journalism in the Greenhouse Era: Looking for Climate News beyond Corporate Media."  Check it out.  It provides some vital information as we consider how media in our country cover this urgent topic--and as we decide where to turn for factual reporting by experts.